Now, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has stepped forward to declare there is no such thing as mermaids. Sorry, Ariel.

As with the CDC, NOAA’s decision to state the obvious didn’t come completely out of the blue. What happened is that in May Animal Planet ran a fictional show titled ‘Mermaids: The Body Found’ which confused some viewers because it was similar in format to the legitimate documentaries that appear on the channel. A handful of the most gullible viewers even contacted the NOAA to learn more about the fish/human hybrid, prompting the agency to release a statement on their website debunking the existence of mermaids.

Mermaids — those half-human, half-fish sirens of the sea — are legendary sea creatures chronicled in maritime cultures since time immemorial,” reads the release. “But are mermaids real? No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found. Why, then, do they occupy the collective unconscious of nearly all seafaring peoples? That’s a question best left to historians, philosophers, and anthropologists.”

With that out of the way, we really need some clarification on centaurs. We’re not quite sure what governmental agency would be best to handle that debunking, but it would probably be somewhere in the Department of the Interior.